The British-flagged tanker Stena Impero is “free to leave,” Iranian officials said Monday, marking the end of a two-month standoff between Tehran and London over the detained vessel.
This announcement comes a day before UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are set to meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) captured the Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz on July 19 amid increasing hostility between Tehran and the West. Twenty-three crew members — none of them British — were on board.
While the tanker was sailing under a UK flag, the company that operates it is headquartered in Sweden. Earlier this month, seven Indian crew members aboard the tanker were released.
The ship was seized two weeks after the UK detained an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar, a British overseas territory on the edge of southern Spain. Gibraltar authorities released that ship in late August, despite eleventh-hour efforts by the United States to halt the move.
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